It was 1968. Rajathi Ammal had given birth to Kanimozhi in a hospital. As per hospital procedure she had to give father’s name , which she did. At this point of time, Karunanthi was minister in the cabinet of Anna as Minister of Public Works, Highways, Transport, Ports and Minor Irrigation and he was already married to Dayalu Ammal.

The news reached the ears of Congressmen. Congress has just been defeated by DMK, a year earlier in 1967. this was first political scandal in their hand and wanted to use to their advantage to inflict as much damage to the new DMK government. The state assembly was to be battlefield.

‘Who is Rajathi?’ asked a Congress MLA, followed by a chorus from entire opposition. The opposition was hell bent in embarrassing Karunanidhi and in essence the new DMK government headed by Anna. Anna understood these chants weren’t going to end and had potential to become a great threat to his government. He took Karunanithi aside and asked Karunanithi to own up the issue and face the consequences.

Karunanithi stepped back into the assembly to answer the Congress chants of ‘Who is Rajathi?’. His answer had potential of becoming a state wide scandal and possibly any negative reaction could have put an end to his budding political career.

He stepped forward to the microphone and answered, ‘en magal Kanimozhiyin Thai’ (‘my Daughter Kanimozhi’s mother’). With these four words, he turned politically disastrous situation to state he could gain sympathy from many.

look specifically into these four words ‘en magal Kanimozhiyin Thai’ (‘my Daughter Kanimozhi’s mother’) – he doesn’t call Rajathi Ammal his companion/wife rather he says she is mother of my daughter. This extraordinary usage of Tamil language helped him survive in 1968 and now it is 2018.

But is it really extra ordinary usage of Tamil?

Not really, this is a very common usage in Sangam literature. For example see the poem below

[Poem basically says that Hero on his own accord came to the concubine and she didn’t not covet him. But this guys promises lot in concubine’s house and becomes his wife’s puppet in his house. Concubine doesn’t want to accord status of wife to his wife , so address her as mother of his son, meaning she has some value only because she has borne a son for him. Else concubine was hero’s sweet heart]